Iain Strachan

As is quite well-known, Quaker meetings are based around silence, with occasional contributions, which anyone can make, if they feel moved by the Spirit to do so.  This is known as "Spoken Ministry".  Occasionally, no-one will speak for the entire hour of Silent Worship, and on occasion maybe three or four will speak out of the silence.  Sometimes one piece of spoken ministry will trigger another, but it is not in any sense a discussion or a debate.  We try to sense where the words are coming from and learn what has nourished the life of other. For me, giving spoken ministry is something that builds up inside during the Meeting.  I do not go in with the express intention of speaking, or make any prior preparations - what sparks the ministry might be something I've recently seen or observed, or it may simply arise during the silent contemplation.  As a thought builds up that might lead to ministry, one needs to consider if it is appropriate to speak, and g...

The following is a somewhat expanded version of an article I had published in the "Christian Forum" column in the Abingdon Herald: One particularly hapless character in Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot", is ironically named "Lucky". I think that Lucky is a negative analogue of Christ: a suffering servant treated abysmally by his master, carrying a heavy burden of two bags about the stage. A famous passage in the book of Isaiah in the Bible also concerns a suffering servant: Christians believe this to be a prophecy of Christ. Lucky only gets to make one speech, a long, rambling and incoherent tirade, the gist of which is this: no matter what we do, we are all going to waste away to death, and our labours will be unfinished. The final word of the speech is, despairingly: "Unfinished!" By contrast, the last words of Christ on the cross are triumphant: "It is finished." The text of Lucky's speech (along with gui...

[Author's note:  One of the biggest questions facing believers is the problem of pain and suffering.  There are no easy glib answers to this question.  It is clear that on a planet of fixed size, if there is birth there has to be death to make room.  But what if all pain were removed and death was always painless?  I have tried to imagine what this would be like in the following story ..] One in fifty thousand is not much to worry about.  It is hardly worth concerning yourself when you go to sleep that one in fifty thousand will not wake up the next day, and you could be one of them.  One in fifty thousand will go to sleep, content and happy and painless, and will be carried off by the silent swathe that passes over the slumbering.  One in fifty-one thousand one hundred and thirty-five, to be precise, the statisticians have calculated.  It is so curious an exactitude that one may expect to live, on average for precisely threescore years and ...

The wounded surgeon plies the steel That questions the distempered part Beneath the bleeding hands we feel The sharp compassion of the healer's art Resolving the enigma of the fever chart. Our only health is the disease If we obey the dying nurse Whose constant care is not to please But to remind of our, and Adam's curse, And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse. The whole earth is our hospital Endowed by the ruined millionaire, Wherein, if we do well, we shall Die of the absolute paternal care That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere. The chill ascends from feet to knees The fever sings in mental wires. If to be warmed, then I must freeze And quake in frigid purgatorial fires Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars. The dripping blood our only drink, The bloody flesh our only food: In spite of which we like to think That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood - Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good. I have just typed by hand ...

From a letter from 2001 between the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams and Dr. Deborah Pitt, a psychiatrist and evangelical Christian: "By the end of the 1980s I had definitely come to the conclusion that scripture was not dealing with the predicament of persons whom we should recognise as homosexual by nature. I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness." Good for him!! I agree with the above 100%. Apparently the Church of England is going to split on this issue, and some Conservative Christians say Williams's position is now "untenable". Some Conservative Christians need to go back to the Bible and read Matthew 7:1-2 . Some Conservative Christians need to understand the truly horrific abominations that are perpetrated on innocent children, not by h...

There is an old conundrum often used to argue against the idea of an Omnipotent (capable of anything) God. It goes as follows: "Can God make a stone so heavy He cannot lift it?" A simple examination of the logical conundrum would lead to the conclusion that God cannot be omnipotent. If He CAN make such a stone, then He is incapable of lifting it by definition. If, however, he cannot make such a stone then that is also something He is incapable of doing. Therefore, God cannot be omnipotent - whichever way you look at it, there is something that God is incapable of doing. As the atheist writer Douglas Adams would have put it "So God disappears in a puff of logic". The thought that has come to me recently is that this simple analysis doesn't apply to the Christian religion - and that the mystery of Incarnation (the Word became flesh and dwelt among us - John 1:14), offers a resolution to this paradox. The paradox would indeed be unanswerable for a God that li...

I'm a bit of a fan of Shostakovich's music ( see Hunger for Seriousness ). Well, a BIG fan if I'm honest, almost to the point of obsession! Shostakovich's 13th Symphony contains a setting to music of a famous poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, called "Babiy Yar". It is a vehement protest against anti-semitism in the USSR, and its final two lines speak directly to me in my current explorations of the issue of gay Christians and the attitude of the church towards them (see Outing myself as a Straight gay sympathizer ). Since the "outing" post, I've had some reasonably civilised discussions on a Christian email list I'm subscribed to, along with some lamentable expressions of bigotry. I've been accused of being a "liberal in terms of sexual ethics", and asked if I approve of a heterosexual leaving his wife for another woman ( of course not! Duh!). For the record, I consider myself to be an evangelical. But that "liberal" ...

OK. Having thought about it and wrestled with it for a long time, the time has come to make a stand. Guess it's pretty cowardly to put it on a blog that practically no people read, but one has to make a start somewhere. Let's get "straight" to the point. I think it's time evangelical Christians took a long hard think about their attitude towards gays. There are a range of attitudes prevalent, and while I think there is some evidence of evangelicals acting in a compassionate manner, I think few people take it far enough. There is the out-and-out homophobia element. The kind of person that says homosexuality is "disgusting". Yes, in some ways this is understandable - there is a natural revulsion that people feel for certain physical acts, sure. But people who think that way should really try to remember what they felt when they first found out about sex. When you're very young and you first find out about what your parents did to make you, your...